Headwaters

January 10, 2022
Fisherman Tomine (Closer to the Ground) combines incandescent personal reflections and environmental advocacy in this moving paean to fly fishing. “Fishing was never a sport... for me,” Tomine writes at the outset, rather, it’s “who I am.” What follows is a vivid portrait of a man in pursuit of a lifelong obsession. As he relates, his “steelhead jones” had its hooks in him early, during his childhood fishing for trout in Oregon in the 1970s and, later, as a teen “too busy trying to catch my first steelhead” to notice girls. Arriving at adulthood, he recounts such adventures as catching a 90-pound giant trevally bonefish, and embarking on an expedition to the Russian Arctic—where the abundance of trout was rivaled only by the region’s mosquitos. Later chapters witness his evolution from acolyte to conservationist; in one section, he memorably recalls screening the conservationist documentary Artifishal to a sold-out crowd in Japan, where the “culture built around the eating of fish.” Mixing good-natured humor with a reverence of the world around him—“It starts with the fish itself. The sleek, chrome beauty... carrying all the strength and fecundity of the sea to inland waters”—Tomine delivers a work that informs and moves in equal measure. This is sure to reel in readers.